


Day of the Dead

by Mercury_1998



Category: Fallout 4
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Light Angst, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-31
Updated: 2017-07-31
Packaged: 2018-12-09 13:23:07
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,327
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11669982
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mercury_1998/pseuds/Mercury_1998
Summary: Nora goes on a pilgrimage and says goodbye to her ghosts.





	Day of the Dead

There were days when Nora didn’t speak.

She’d wake up and disentangle herself out of a pair of arms that did not belong to her husband. Get up off a bed that was full of dust in a house that she had built but felt no attachment to.

She’d walk down the stairs. Nate used to talk about moving into a multi-story house.

She would pass Shawn’s room- not the real Shawn, she always made sure to distinguish. The Shaun whom she had carried in her womb, whom she had nursed and loved and shared with Nate.

She would leave the Red Rocket Truck Stop, wandering up the barren path like it was some kind of pilgrimage.

It was Halloween. She remembered her honeymoon with Nate to Mexico, before he went on tour. The heat wasn’t too dissimilar, though the lack of colours was jarring. Down there they called it Dia de los Muertos. Day of the Dead.

How apt.

 

She drifted through Sanctuary, ignored by its new residents. The first time she had done this had resulted in confusion. The second, in concern. Now it was almost as well worn a habit as a smoking problem. Doctor Amari wouldn’t let her use the Memory Den anymore. It isn’t healthy to live in the past. But neither is it healthy to slave away living in a radioactive wasteland either.

So instead, Nora would pass through every house in her old neighbourhood like she was just another ghost, from a life so disparate there was no one left to understand. Well, perhaps one.

She’d visit every other house before she stepped foot on her own, trying to bring to mind the faces of their old inhabitants, failing to even recall their names. She'd be home. Her home, with Nate, and Shawn. She had to put a new door in. And a new bed. One time she’d travelled back to Sanctuary to report back to Preston and she’d found a settler in the bed that belonged to  _Nate and her_  room. She couldn’t remember what she had done, she had blacked out, but shortly after the event the settler had moved from Sanctuary and she hadn’t come across him in any other Minutemen settlement she visited.

 

The house itself she had turned into something of a shrine. To the life that had been hers, though now it was no ones. Junk lined every surface, every shelf cluttered with baubles, antiquities now. A typewriter on the kitchen counter. Three different vases, each a different variation of gaudy and tacky, on the table. The TV turned on, though only static came through.

She moved on to the bathroom, wiping a hand across the grimy surface, remembering that morning. Nate had been so playful. None of what he’d brought home with him lingering in his eyes. She didn’t go into the laundry. With so little space, she had turned it into a dumping ground for old guns. There was a saying somewhere in there. Nate would know.

She always starts with the master bedroom.  Out the window that has no glass she can see the distant turrets and guard posts. The hum of a generator is carried in on the wind with the sound of Radio Freedom being changed to the Diamond City Radio. The beautiful, mellow crooning of Ella Fitzgerald has Nora pulling on a rose coloured dress that somehow survived the blast. She had worn this when she and Nate went dancing. Every Tuesday night.

She floats out of the room, stopping in the hallway, like a scratch on a record, before entering Shawn’s room. Toys are piled in every space not occupied by furniture. Before the Institute, when she travelled she would pick up odd objects, remnants of a time long past. But mostly, she would pick up toys. Teddy bears, trucks, aliens, cars, board games, magazines. They had never finished their Halloween costumes that year. Nate had wanted her to go as the Silver Shroud. She had hated those comics but the suit now lay across their bed, and she would wear it, every now and then, for him.

She tries not to think about Shawn, the real one, too often. But every time she came here she would stare at the crib that she had built while Nate had watched, complaining teasingly about her showing him up, and she would see an old man in a bed. Who looked so like Nate she had cried for him as soon as he entered that room, so long ago. The young Shawn, synth Shawn, looked more like her, and that broke her heart a little because she knew. He would never grow up to look like her Nate.

Cogsworth entered the hallway behind her.

“Will you come with me?”

“Of course, mum.”

 

They trekked up to the Vault. Nora spent the walk split between remembering the run up the hill, frantic, Nate holding Shawn in his arms, and the stagger back down, reeling from what was gone. She sat on the top of the Vault, staring out across the Commonwealth. She had gone back down once, to get Nate. She would never go back down again. The only upside of this new radioactive world was that it was rarely cold these days. At night, she’d wrap herself in ragged blankets. The cold was a feeling that would never get better for her.

She stood after some time. The sun was dipping low in the sky but there was still one more stop.

Nate’s grave was at their favourite spot. Up in the trees above Sanctuary, though thankfully far enough away the Vault was out of sight. She had tried to find flowers to plant but the best she could do was a mutfruit tree.

“I wish you were here,” she stroked the earth. “Or I was with you, wherever you are.

“Sometimes I wonder whether you would have done the same things if you had lived and I’d died. If you’d have made the same choices. But then I’m glad I’ll never know because I don’t know what would be worse. And I hate myself.”

She hadn’t heard Cogsworth leave but he had. She sucked in her breath.

“I loved you and Shawn. More than anything. I still do. We were gonna grow old together, watching Shawn grow up and start a family of his own, be grandparents together. But that was taken from us.

“I’m not coming back again. I’m sorry but I can’t. I have responsibilities and every time I come up here… I’m one step closer to crawling under this earth with you. I can’t, not yet.”

She stared into the glaring sun as it sunk, blinking back tears. “You were my everything. But not anymore. They’re not replacing you and Shawn. They’re… helping. This isn’t a goodbye, hunk. It’s a… see you later.”

She stood, shaking.

“Nora, where are your shoes?”

She looked down at her scratched feet in confusion then back up.

In the shadow of the sun, she could almost pretend it was Nate, back from the dead. But she didn’t want to anymore. Nick’s eyes flashed gold, as the light finally began to fade. He stood at a distance, hesitant to tread on hallowed ground as if Nate’s skeletal hand would burst through and pull her down with him.

She smiled weakly at him. “Hey, Nick.”

He held out his coat and she stepped towards him gingerly, finally feeling the cuts along the sole of her feet. He wrapped her up when she stood within his arms before carefully lifting her, and carrying her down the hill.

Her eyes grew heavy and sleep seemed imminent. Nick’s eyes and lit cigarette were like little beacons, blurring but bright.

“Hey, Nick?”

“Yeah, doll?”

“Is Shawn alright?”

His mouth quirked and his face softened as he turned down to look at Nora, his woman out of time.

“Yeah, doll. He was asking what’s for dinner.”


End file.
